When a user receives an attachment in an email or a link to a file that is stored at a location remote to the user's device, it is often desirable for the user to view or edit the contents of the file. One way for the user to view or edit the contents of the file is to download the file and determine an application that is locally installed on the user's device to open the file. Furthermore, if the user attempts to access the same file from a second user device or a different machine, the file needs to be downloaded again to the second user device, and the process of identifying a locally installed application on the second user device needs to be repeated. This process can be time consuming and inefficient, especially for a user with multiple user devices, which can each have different sets of locally installed applications.